Who wants an all-white world, anyway?

LONDON -- "Whites will be a minority in Britain by the end of the century. . . . It would be the first time in history that a major indigenous population has voluntarily become a minority, rather than through war, famine and disease. Whites will be a minority in London by 2010."

So began a recent front-page article in The Observer, normally Britain's least sensationalist Sunday newspaper. Inside was a full-page story headed "The Last Days of a White World," which led with the news that the U.S. Census Bureau has just predicted that "non-Hispanic whites," currently almost three-quarters of the American population, will drop below half between 2055 and 2060.

Let's pause a moment to unpick the assumptions in there. The first, obviously, is that Spanish-speaking whites aren't really white. This is bizarre.